The use of poultry wings is somewhat limited because the amount of meat in the wing segments is relatively small when compared to other parts of the poultry carcass, and because the wing segments contain bones that are difficult to remove. This causes the use of poultry wings to be less economical than the use of other available poultry parts and parts of other carcasses.
Because of these problems, poultry wings and wing segments have been eaten by holding the cooked wings or wing segments in the hands and eating the meat away from the bones. While this use of poultry wings and wing segments is economical because the products do not have to be deboned before consumption, the wings are somewhat difficult to eat, particularly because the person eating the wings must grasp the wing with his or her hands, leaving a residue of grease or other undesirable matter on the hands.
In recent years, it has become desirable to produce cooked poultry wing segments with an end portion of the bones of the segments exposed. During the cooking process, the grease and other undesirable matter that is present on the exposed ends of the bones is evaporated or otherwise dissipated, leaving a relatively dry bone end for grasping by the hand of the person to eat the meat from the bone. Also, during the cooking process, the meat usually shrinks and moves away from the exposed bone end, increasing the amount of exposed bone.
At first, the separation of the wing segments from one another and pulling the meat away from a bone end was performed by hand. However, the hand operations were expensive and, therefore, the process was not economical.
More recently, efforts have been made to automatically separate wing segments of poultry products from one another and to retract the meat from about an end portion of the bone of the wing segments. When the wing segments are cooked, this achieves the desired end result of producing a cooked wing segment having a bone end exposed and substantially dry for handling by the person consuming the meat from the wing. However, the small size of the poultry wings and wing segments causes the process of producing the product to become cumbersome, unreliable, and uneconomical. This invention is directed to the solution of the problems associated with this process.